Job Boards for Job Hunting

Trekking all over town to hand out resumés can be a frustrating ordeal, and this should by no means be your only method of job hunting. Asking people you know if they’ve heard about any job opportunities can yield good results, but if that doesn’t work out you will need to try a more tactical approach. There are hundreds of Canadian job boards online that can help you find the exact job you are looking for, whatever that may be.

The more well-known job boards include Indeed, Monster and Workopolis. You’ve no doubt seen at least one of these job boards advertised on TV or on the side of a bus. These employment websites offer a wide spectrum of career opportunities—they list job openings in any and every category, from marketing to engineering to social work. Some of these websites function as a glorified search engine that provides links to job openings on company websites. Clicking on a job listing will open up the relevant page on the company website in a new window, and a button or link that says something like “Apply Now!” will be on the page. As far as functionality is concerned, however, websites like Indeed could be considered pale imitations of “real” job boards, and simply plunder their information; this was perfectly illustrated recently when I clicked on one of the “job postings” on Indeed to discover that it was nothing more than a link to a Workopolis listing!

Proper employment websites, such as Monster, have a wide assortment of individual job listings posted directly to the website on a daily basis. Instead of just linking to a company’s website, these job boards provide individual listings of available positions that include details such as job description, roles and responsibilities, desired skills and experience, and required education level. What makes these websites worth checking out is the fact that if a potential employer took the time to post a separate job listing onto a job board, that employer is probably very eager to hire someone sooner rather than later.

The more popular employment websites are great, but they aren’t your only option. There are quite a few lesser-known job boards that specialize in specific fields or cater to specific groups of people. Examples of career-specific job boards include CASLPA (the Canadian Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists) and Dice, which focuses on the IT industry. Employment websites that cater to specific groups of people include the Aboriginal Job Centre. The University of Toronto also has its own job board, located at CC Online (Career Centre Online), which provides job hunting assistance to current students as well as to recent graduates. For a full two years after convocation, U of T graduates can use their student ID number and password to access all of the employment services that the website has to offer.